Still Swinging a Mean Bat : 55-and-Over Crowd Turns to Slow-Pitch Softball as a Game for Year-Round Recreation

Outfielder Lou Candiotti plays softball twice a week, virtually year-round. On Wednesdays, he’s with the Giants, an Anaheim team. On Sundays, he plays for the Huntington Beach Orangemen. And on Thursdays and Saturdays, he participates in workouts with the rest of his team.

Candiotti, a 5-foot-9, 190-pound switch-hitter who also manages the Orangemen, will be 70 in July.

He is part of a growing number of men 55 and over in Orange County and throughout Southern California who regularly play slow-pitch softball. When they aren’t involved in summer, fall and winter leagues, they’re headed for nearby tournaments.

Recently, they played in Hemet, and on Feb. 20-22, they’ll participate in a Palm Springs tournament that lasts nearly a week because of the number of teams of different age groups involved. Similar tournaments take place in Las Vegas, Reno and Sacramento, often twice each year. Other tournaments, for those who can afford to go, are held in England, Australia and Japan.

There are nearly 40 teams in Orange County made up of men at least 55 years of age. About 30 of them consist of athletes (and they certainly still consider themselves athletes) ages 55 to 64. About six clubs consist of men who are at least 65, and two others include only those who have reached a minimum age of 70. By the end of 1991, Candiotti believes that there will be at least six more 70-plus teams.

Candiotti, a Huntington Beach resident, is sort of the Abner Doubleday of these leagues. Doubleday is credited with having devised the rules of baseball, as it is played today, in 1839. In truth, a contemporary named Alexander Cartwright had much more to do with the development of baseball than Doubleday, but let’s not quibble with tradition in America’s most tradition-bound sport.

Thirteen years ago, there was nowhere for--shall we say--”mature” infielders, outfielders, catchers and pitchers to turn, once they had lost their spot on the neighborhood team to a younger man. Then, in 1978, the Santa Ana Oldtimers were founded. Candiotti, a distant relative of current Cleveland Indians pitcher Tom Candiotti, was a member of that team.

“There was nobody around except the Oldtimers,” he recalls. “We used to have to go as far as Culver City to find someone to play. I thought . . . there ought to be some other teams to play.”

Soon, Candiotti and some friends discovered that other men their age also were interested in playing. But breaking through the municipal bureaucracy to set up leagues wasn’t easy at first.

“Oh, it was terrible,” he said. “We’d try to find a place to play, and all the fields were taken with soccer or younger men’s leagues. We had a need and, as residents, we had a right to a public place to play.

“I went to city council meetings all over the area, and I got a lot of resistance, at first. I just went through all kinds of gyrations. Finally, I showed other guys how to go to the council meetings, and they (city councils) finally started coming around. Now, everybody and his brother has a team. We’ve got clubs in Huntington Beach, Placentia, Fullerton, Anaheim, Westminster and other places.”

The phenomenon is hardly limited to Orange County. Candiotti says Bakersfield has a number of teams for men 45 and older, and the Palm Springs area, a retirement haven, has several.

The eight teams of 65- and 70-plus players in Anaheim see action at John Marshall Park in Anaheim in an association called the Southern California 65 League. It is operated by the city, and each team must pay an entry fee, typically $100 for 10 games.

The 55-and-up league plays at Murdy Park and Greer Park, both in Huntington Beach. Their games are played through the auspices of Huntington Beach recreation officials. Similar entry fees are assessed.

About two years ago, Candiotti placed newspaper advertisements, trying to organize leagues for men 45 and up, basically to serve as training grounds for the 55-and-older clubs. He soon gave it up, finding there wasn’t as much interest in that age group.

Few concessions to age are made in the seniors leagues, but the absence of sliding is a fundamental difference. Anyone who slides at any base, including home plate, is automatically out. “You can’t have a guy 70 years old sliding into second base,” Candiotti says. “That’s the best possible way to break a leg.”

The umpire is allowed to use his discretion, however, so if a runner accidentally falls near a base, and the umpire doesn’t believe it was an intentional slide, the man is not automatically called out.

Instead of sliding, a runner is allowed to continue beyond the base, as a batter in conventional baseball runs beyond first base. They cannot, however, head toward the next base without committing themselves.

“If you’re going from first to second on an infield grounder,” Candiotti said, “and you think it’s going to be close at second, you just continue straight on past second into left field. But if you turn to the left like you’re going to third, you can be tagged out in a rundown or just forced out if a defensive player gets the ball back to second before you get there.”

One other differing rule costs teams “at least a run per game, especially with newer players,” Candiotti says. It goes against everything people have been told all their lives, but runners are out if they touch home plate. The rule was instituted to avoid collisions with the catcher.

Instead, a runner must step beyond a white line that extends perpendicular to the third base line, in foul territory, next to the plate.

Those in the 65- and 70-plus leagues have another rule unique to them: Instead of the 10 defensive players common to most slow-pitch leagues, they are allowed 11 to compensate for the decreased range that comes with advancing age. The extra man can be used in the infield, if the defensive team’s manager thinks the man at bat is a weak hitter, or he can be placed as a fifth outfielder, if the batter is considered likely to get the ball out of the infield.

Finally, there’s a major difference in scoring. To eliminate overwhelming blowouts, the 65-and-older leagues have a five-run-per-inning maximum. That is, once a team has scored five runs, the inning is over. Candiotti says the rule is generally well-accepted, in that it helps avoid outrageous scores.

There are more similarities to regular slow-pitch softball than there are differences. Gloves, uniforms, softballs, bats (both aluminum and wooden) are the same, and players must wear plastic- or rubber-soled shoes, rather than steel cleats. Most slow-pitch and softball leagues banned metal cleats about a decade ago.

There’s another area in which the older athletes have achieved a kind of unwanted parity with the younger ones. Injuries.

“Oh, do we get injuries,” Candiotti said. “Knees, arms, legs. The same thing the younger fellows get. We get them. Some guys will play with broken fingers or sprained ankles. Others won’t. It’s just like any level of baseball. And a lot of it relates to condition. Some guys put on weight, and they can’t move the way they once could. You put them at first base or in the outfield, but they won’t cover much ground. The middle infielders tend to be leaner, more physically fit.”

As smoking has fallen out of favor with younger players, so, too, has it become less common among the older ballplayers, Candiotti said. “I don’t allow any smoking in the dugout,” he said. “You’re going to have a few guys on a club who still smoke, but I tell them to go sit in the stands if they have to smoke. Sometimes you’ll see a guy taking infield practice with a cigarette in his mouth. Not on one of my clubs. I’d say 90% of the guys don’t smoke.

“I had a heart attack and my doctor told me to quit; said it was bad for me. That was all I needed. Maybe some guys need more than that.”

Managers have a choice of allowing up to 15 men (usually the full roster) to take their turns at bat, which means some won’t be playing defensively, or batting just the standard 10, or 11 in the 65-plus category. If they bat only 10, however, they must remove a man from the game if someone pinch-hits for him or takes over for him defensively.

Candiotti played in high school in his native Plains, Pa., and in the Air Force, in which he served for 12 years during and after World War II. He later became an automotive sales manager and then spent eight years shipping and packing airplane parts at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station before retiring.

“Back in Pennsylvania, I took one look at the hard slate infields most of the towns had,” he recalls, “and I knew right then that I wanted to be an outfielder. I didn’t want a bad hop to take out a few teeth or hit me in the eye. I still like playing the outfield. Mainly left, but I’ll play anywhere.

“I got married, I had a family, I turned 55 and I said, ‘Damn, I wonder if I forgot how to play?’ I hadn’t. I had lost something, but everyone does. Most guys don’t forget. If they were good when they were young, they’re most likely still going to be pretty good.”

The senior leagues are a true cross-section of economic life, Candiotti says. Doctors, attorneys, blue-collar workers, “guys with more money than (ex-President) Carter has peanuts.”

Anyone who has ever played on any level can appreciate Candiotti’s feelings when asked what position is hardest to fill in the 55-and-over age group. “Shortstop,” he said. “I’d give anything for a good shortstop. We’ve got first basemen, second basemen, third basemen, plenty of guys who can pitch, but I’ll be a son of a gun, when I take a guy from second or third and put him at shortstop, he either can’t get to the ball or can’t find first base with his throws.”

Some things don’t change with age.